The Ten Commandments
CHRIST'S NEW COMMANDMENT
(Matt. 5:43-48; 22:34-40; John 13:34, 35; 15:12-14; Gal. 5:13, 14; KJV)
Subject
Love, the Supreme Characteristic of Those Who Are the Disciples of Christ
Golden Text
“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).
Plan of the Lesson
Jesus’ Teaching Regarding Love for Even Our Enemies (Matt. 5:43-48)
Jesus’ Teaching Regarding the Two Great Old Testament Commandments Regarding Love for God and Our Neighbors (Matt. 22:34-40; with reference to Luke 10:25-37)
The Old Commandment Made New (John 13:34, 35; 15:12-14)
Love Fulfills All the Law (Gal. 5:13, 14)
Setting of the Lesson
Time: The Sermon on the Mount was delivered in the summer of A.D. 28. The words to the lawyer were spoken on Tuesday, April 4, A.D. 30. The parable of the Good Samaritan was given in November or December, A.D. 29. All the words taken from John’s Gospel were uttered on Thursday, April 6, A.D. 30. The epistle of Paul to the Galatians was written A.D. 58.
Place: We do not know the location of the place where the Sermon on the Mount was given. The discourse with the lawyer took place in Jerusalem. The parable of the Good Samaritan was given in Peræa. The words taken from John’s Gospel were spoken in the upper room of a home in Jerusalem. The epistle of Paul to the Galatians was written to the Christians in the Roman province of Galatia, in Asia Minor.
Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:43-48
Jesus’ Teaching Regarding Love for Even Our Enemies
This paragraph forms the conclusion of that part of the Sermon on the Mount in which the Lord taught the higher and deeper meanings of most of the Ten Commandments of the old dispensation, lifting them up to new heights, and making them apply to the very inner life of man (cf. Luke 6:27-36). Now, as it were, He leaves the Decalogue, and in expounding the great truth regarding love for one another quotes from Leviticus 19:18.
5:43 … “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” The phrase “and hate tine enemy” is not found in the Old Testament, though the contrary of it is found in Exodus 23:4. With their customary efforts to explain away the rigorous requirements of the law, the Jewish teachers insisted on a strict and limited sense of the term “neighbor.” They held that an enemy was not a neighbor, and that the commandment to love the latter implied permission to withhold it from the former. So, as they publicly repeated and expounded the law, they would make the addition, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” The commandment to love the neighbor was extended to strangers in Leviticus 19:33, 34; yet that meant strangers sojourning in Israel.
5:44 … “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.” A.B. Bruce points out that the word ‘”enemies’” may be taken in all senses: national, private, and religious. Jesus absolutely negatives hatred as inhuman, but the sequel shows that He has in view the enemies whom it is most difficult to love, those who persecute on account of religion. There are no hatreds so bitter and ruthless as those originating therein. It is hard to love the persecutor who thinks he does God service by heaping on others all manner of indignities. There is no difficulty in understanding what these words mean. One knows of no limitation that can be legitimately put on them. We do not need an explanation of the words as much as we need a determination to live them out in our own lives. This may be called the most difficult virtue to practice of all those mentioned in the New Testament, at least regarding our relationships to others. If we loved our enemies, we could never wish them harm; read this verse in the light of 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 Corinthians 13 in the light of this verse. We cannot hurt any for whom we are sincerely praying – we cannot wish them ill or speak ill of them.
5:45 … “That ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” Sixteen different times in the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord speaks of God as the Father. In this clause we find the secret of our ability to do what the Lord commands us to do in the preceding verse. If we are the sons of God, if God is our Father by obeying the Gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, then God’s love will be in our hearts, and we will be able to love our enemies because God does, a truth that the Lord immediately emphasizes.
“For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.” Sunshine and rain are naturally chosen as among the chief providential blessings. The heavenly Father loves His enemies, and sends natural blessings on them as well as on His friends. But the love of God to His enemies is not the same as to His friends, the one being a love of compassion and benevolence, the other a love of complacency. He bestows benefits on the wicked; He delights in the good, and in like manner we are not asked to take delight in our enemies, but to cherish no revengeful and malignant feeling towards them, and to do anything we can for their welfare.
5:46 … “For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?” The publicans were tax-collectors for the Roman government, and many of them were traitorous Jews, who, because of their susceptibility to bribery, and their enrichment by corrupt practices in collecting taxes, were utterly despised by the Jews. Our Lord reminds His hearers that it is no credit to them if they love those who love them, because the publicans, the most despised of people, would do as much, i.e., they would love men who love them; and therefore, in loving only those who loved him, the proudest Pharisee was no better than a despised publican.
5:47 … “And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the Gentiles the same?” A.B. Bruce points out that “from our Western point of view, to salute one is a very slight display of love, a mere civility; but more significant in the East, and here symbolic of friendly relationships, and thus by many interpreted to mean ‘to act in a friendly manner.’ Christ would awaken in disciples the ambition to excel. He does not wish us to be moral mediocrities, men of average morality, but to be morally superior.” Bruce further states: “Note that Jesus sees some good even in despised classes, social outcasts.”
5:48 … “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Perfection in the Old Testament means without moral blemish, and can be used of upright men such as Noah (Gen. 6:9) and Job (1:1). It is enjoined in Deuteronomy 18:13. Here the context defines it as perfection in love that seeks the good of all men. God is perfect because He bestows His favor on all alike. In all things, love included, we should seek to be perfect, even as our heavenly Father is – to be like Him, and so prove ourselves to be His children. Our own minds demand a perfect standard, such as the divine nature presents. However, though we may actually fall short of attaining it, yet if we are content with coming short then we give no evidence of being a child of God. In classic Greek this word “perfect” was used of adults as distinguished from infants or children undergoing discipline. It was also used in the religion of Greece of those who had passed beyond the novitiate, who had arrived, who had reached the goal. In the Gospels this word occurs only here and in one other place (Matt. 19:21). It is not a word that always means exactly the same thing. Here is a baby in its mother’s arms. Is it perfect? Ask the mother. Meet that baby seventeen years later – now a youth. Is he perfect? Ask the youth. Add another four, five, half a dozen years – now he is a man. Is he perfect? Perhaps now we had better ask the woman he considers perfect. Perfect as babe, perfect as boy, perfect as man; but always room for growth, advancement, development. Perfect then means arrival at one particular stage of completeness, not the impossibility of procedure from that stage to another. Perfection is the reaching of a given limit. When that given limit is reached, there may be a new departure, a new enterprise, a new vision luring to new heights, and so consequently a new process toward a larger perfection. That is the divine perfection our Lord is here referring. G. Campbell Morgan put this way: “love desiring the good of all men; love doing good to all men; love set upon men irrespective of what they are in themselves; love for the evil as well as for the good, for the unjust as well as for the just.”
Scripture Reading: Matthew 22:34-40
Jesus’ Teaching Regarding the Two Great Old Testament Commandments Regarding Love for God and Our Neighbors
Cf. Mark 12:28-34.
22:34, 35 … “But the Pharisees, when they heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, gathered themselves together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, trying him.” Being authorized copyists of the law and thus minutely acquainted with the text, the scribes had come to be recognized as authoritative expounders of its meaning (see 2:4). In this capacity they were called “lawyers,” a term also found six times in Luke (and Titus 3:13), and may have been applied only to scribes particularly noted for interpreting the law. Some of them acted as formal “teachers of the law” (law professors), Luke 5:17; Acts 5:34; 1 Timothy 1:7. John A. Broadus points out that as the Law of Moses united civil and religious precepts, “these lawyers must be described to the modern mind as half lawyer, half theologian, corresponding to the original and proper use of the title LL.D., a doctor of laws,” i.e., of both civil law and cannon law. They were looked up to as great authorities. This lawyer that Jesus would say something unpopular, or perhaps that He might be drawn into a bitter and wrangling discussion.
22:36 … “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Among the great teachers of Israel there was constant discussion and argument as to which of the commandments were great and which were comparatively small, or as they put it, which ones were heavy and which were light. There was one school of rabbinical teachers who insisted that the Third Commandment of the Decalogue was the supreme one.
22:37, 38 … “And he said unto them, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment.” It is interesting that when our Lord answered this question, though He quoted from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), He did not refer to any one of the Ten Commandments, but went into the book of Deuteronomy (Deut. 6:5). Of course, everyone who really lives this commandment, loving God with all his being, will naturally love to do the things God commands him to do. Jesus Himself said that if we loved Him, we would keep His commandments (John 14:15). If a husband truly loves his wife, he will do everything to care for her, to make her happy, and would never, of course, even think of harming, deceiving or betraying her. So, if we love God we will love His law, keep His law, and our whole life will be one of conforming to His holy will. “Loving God consists in approbation of and inclination toward Him as we know Him to be good. Love of God must therefore be the outcome of knowledge of God” (Dr. James E. Priest).
22:39, 40 … “And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.” Notice that our Lord does not say the second, but a second. He is quoting here from Leviticus 19:18. Cf. Matthew 19:19. What will inspire such love to our neighbor? Only the love of God. When love of self is removed and our love is given to God, then we will seek the objects of God’s love. When we see that our neighbor is as dear to the heart of God as we are, then, if God’s love to us has won our love to Him, our love inevitably goes out to our neighbor. An illustration of that principle is found in the story of David. When David came into his kingdom he inquired, “Is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (2 Sam. 9:1). In other words, “Can you find me any one Jonathan loved? If you find me any one that Jonathan loved, I must love him.” They found Mephibosheth, who was lame in both his feet; and David took him to the royal palace, set him at the royal table, gave him the royal bounty, and loved him, all for the sake of Jonathan. When a man has seen God and his heart has gone out in love to God, he will turn and say, “Are there any of the offspring of God that I may love for the sake of God?” That man will begin to love his neighbor as himself, when his love for himself has been transferred to God, and has come back in the mystery of the finding of himself in right relationship to God. Then a passion is born in his heart – a passion to go out and seek those who are missing the vision, virtue and victory; bringing them to the Father’s house, to true relationship with Him. Loving our neighbor is not singing hymns about our neighbor, not holding religious sentiments toward our neighbor, not merely hoping that some day our neighbor will go through the pearly gates into heaven; loving our neighbor is to pour out the life in sacrificial attempt to heal his wounds, rest his weariness, and lift him to the level on which God would have him dwell.
What is the one great reason why the first commandment in the teaching of our Lord is the one which He put His finger on rather than any of the others? What are some of the ways in which we prove that we love God? What are some of the unmistakable evidences that we truly love others? Can a person truly have his life marked by a sincere, abiding love for others, and at the same time have no love for God? From reading literature pertaining to the subject of the communistic government, would one be inclined to say that a spirit of love for fellow man dominated Russia? What happens to us when we hate our enemies? What effect does hatred in our heart have on our enemies? Is hatred a redeeming or destructive force?
Luke 10:25-37
The first five verses of the passage chosen from Luke’s Gospel are so similar to the verses in Matthew’s Gospel that we have just considered that we need make no comment on them here. The beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan that follows is found only in this Gospel. It is a perfect illustration of the principle of loving one’s enemies. The Samaritans and the Jews had been enemies for centuries (John 4:9; Acts 10:28), and continue to be right down to the present time. The man who was beaten and robbed was no doubt a Jew, who had been visiting in Jerusalem, or perhaps was a resident there. The priest and the Levite were members of an order whose business it was to care for the stranger, the unfortunate, and the mistreated. But their hearts knew no love for men as men; there was no compassion flowing out to this abandoned and helpless man. The Samaritan was the last person in the world who would be expected to be gracious to him. But his heart was tender; he could not pass by a person in such great need; racial differences, ancient animosities, were swept aside by a stream of true love. He disregarded the danger of being set upon himself; he gave of his own substance for the man’s care; he inconvenienced himself by delaying his journey; he wearied himself by walking so that the stranger could ride; he made the man’s immediate future secure by pledging further gifts if they should be required. A man in need whose path crosses ours is our neighbor. We are to love him as ourselves. Hard? Yes; but with Christ in our hearts, it is (or should be) our joy and delight.
Scripture Reading: John 13:34, 35; 15:12-14
The Old Commandment Made New
All the words that are found in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters of John were spoken by our Lord on the evening before His crucifixion, and as far as we know are the last words of the Savior to His disciples, emphasizing the great fundamental truths of the new faith He established by His life, death and resurrection. No other person could utter such sentences as come from our Lord’s lips this night with any hope of them ever being realized. Jesus not only was the supreme teacher of the loftiest ethics, but brought to men a power and dynamic that made them capable of living out the teachings of their Lord.
13:34 … “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” The commandment to love was not new, for “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18) was part of the Mosaic law. But the motive is new – to love our neighbor because Christ has loved us. We have only to read the “most excellent way” of love set forth in 1 Corinthians 13, and compare it with the measured benevolence of the Pentateuch, to see how new the commandment had become by having this motive added. A. Plummer points out that “there are two words for new in Greek; one looks forward, young, as opposed to aged; the other looks back, fresh, as opposed to worn out.” It is the latter that is used here and in 19:41. Cf. John 15:9, 12, 17. Our Lord’s love to man was manifest in His attitude toward friends and foes, in the severity of the anger that occasionally flashed against tyrants and oppressors; and in the unceasing tenderness of His action toward the oppressed. Whatever question is asked about Christ, the answer is somehow conditioned in love. Ask concerning His character, and answer by describing the characteristics that made up our Lord’s character sprang from and resulted in love. Inquire regarding the reason for all He did or said, and again it will be found that He acted and spoke in the impulse of love. Examine the direction in which His life proceeded, from boyhood to manhood, from the secrecy of the home at Nazareth to the public ways of the teacher, and on to the cross; and His pathway is the pathway of love. Mark the activity of His life. The cross was the necessary outcome of love. Observe the time of His coming or going, His delays and hastening, retirements and returns to the ways of men. His whole life was a radiant revelation of love itself, and love as the fulfillment of law. The issue of this life was both a mystery and revelation of love, crowning all that had gone before. “In His death love made atonement for the sin of the loveless” (G. Campbell Morgan).
“What keeps men from obeying this commandment is the instinctive self-regard which is natural to us all. There are muscles in the body which are so constructed that they close tightly; and the heart is something like one of these sphincter muscles – it shuts by nature, especially if there has been anything put inside it over which it can shut and keep it all to itself. But there is one thing that dethrones Self, and enthrones the angel Love in a heart, and that is, that into that heart there shall come surging the sense of the great love ‘wherewith I have loved you.’ That melts the iceberg; nothing else will” (Alexander Maclaren).
13:35 … “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” “The well-known anecdote of St. John’s extreme old age preserved by Jerome is a striking comment on the commandment. It is related that the disciples of the apostle, wearied by his constant repetition of the words, ‘Little children, love one another,’ which was all he said when He was carried into their assembly, asked him why he always said this. ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘it is the Lord’s commandment; and if it only be fulfilled, it is enough’” (B.F. Westcott).
The spectacle of love was a witness to the world. In a famous passage, Tertullian said: “The heathen are wont to exclaim with wonder, ‘See how these Christians love one another, and how they are ready to die for one another!’ “Love for others is not a badge of another group of people in the world except Christians. It is absolutely distinct from the way of the world. Of course, husbands and wives, parents and children, any very close friends, naturally love each other. But this commandment includes love for all men, and especially that the whole body of Christians should be bound together by deepest, purest love. We should be known as disciples of Christ, not by our creed, or our ritual; not in our power of testimony, or our fervency in prayer, but by our love for one another. The measure in which Christian people fail in love to each other is the measure in which the world does not believe in them or their Christianity. There is nothing else that hurts the testimony of the Lord’s church as much as quarreling, fighting, bitterness, and jealousies – all that is seen to be the result of lovelessness. The world simply turns with disgust from the testimony of any such group.
15:12 … “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.” Alfred Plummer pointed out that this might literally read, “the commandment that is mine,” answering to our need and mission (1 John 3:16). The many commandments referred to in verse 10 are now gathered up in the one new commandment of which the end and purport was that Christians should love one another after the pattern of their Master. Jesus Christ is the model (v. 13); the source (vv. 14, 15); and the support of love (v. 16).
15:13, 14 … “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friend, if ye do the things which I command you.” Cf. 1 John 4:7, 8. We need to realize the fact that our emotions toward our brother Christians are not matters in which our own inclinations may have their way, but that there is a simple commandment given to us, and that we are bound to cherish love to every man who loves Jesus Christ – even if we differ with his theology; or if he seems ignorant and narrow-minded; of if his outlook on the world is opposed to our own; or if he is rich or poor. Let all these secondary grounds of union and separation be relegated to their proper subordinate place; and let us recognize that the children of one Father are brethren. Our Lord Himself laid down His own life for us (10:15-18). Obedience to the commandments of Christ brings us into precious fellowship with Christ. While it is true that friendship in itself does not rest on law or commands, yet it can never be disputed that friendship does rest on harmony, fellowship, mutual agreement, single objectives, and common attitudes toward great principles. A coarse person can never be a close friend of a refined person. One who lives immorally will never enjoy the intimate friendship of one whose life is pure. A man who is sincerely honest can never be the bosom friend of one who is notoriously crooked. On the contrary, if we love to do the things that Jesus has asked us to do, if we bring ourselves into conformity with His will, if we walk as He walked, inevitably He is our friend and we are His.
Scripture Reading: Galatians 5:13, 14
Love Fulfills All the Law
Here the emphasis is distinctly on the word “servants.” Love needs to serve, and we are to seek opportunities for service, just as the Lord came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. In his book, Character and Conduct of Life (p. 126), the psychologist Professor William McDougal said: “A man who merely loves or merely hates without finding some effective way of serving that which he loves, or exterminating or subduing that which he hates, who does not act with zest, or develop a taste for activity in the service of the goals prescribed by his sentiments, is merely regarded as a poor figure. We may apply to him the disparaging term ‘sentimental.’”
Love, the secret of personal work
“The grief of the Christian soul for another’s sin is a divine alembic for purging out the grosser elements from that other soul. It is in the tears of Jesus that we best discern the unutterableness of Jerusalem’s sin and doom. Love along will save the world. As it is with God, so in our measure it is with us. Our methods and prophesyings, and machinery will fail if they are substituted for love. But where holy love is, if it can endure, at last it wins” (F.B. Meyer).
The manifestation of love among pagan converts
In his book, The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism, Dr. Johann Warneck has a paragraph on the manifestation of love among pagan people who have been brought to obedience to the Gospel of Christ. “We also meet with the sense of kinship, the brotherly love of young Christians. Fellow believers soon learn to look on one another as brethren. According to heathen notions nothing but the tie of blood can form a brotherly union; the new faith in the one God and Redeemer creates a fellowship which is more cordially and joyfully cultivated than those ties of kindred. Christians are one great family, because they know that they are all subjects of one kingdom, of which Jesus Christ is Lord. Wherever Christians meet in Battakland they shake each other by the hand; they call one another dongan – companions, friends – a word which formerly designated members of the same tribe. They all know that they belong to one another. They rejoice in this fellowship, and like to contrast the condition of brotherly love with the heathen period of club law, when every man’s hand was against every other. ‘Formerly we were enemies, but now we are brethren.’ This confession from the west and east of Nias correctly describes the new situation. Christians from the west and east of Nias like to visit each other and strengthen one another’s faith. Some Christians of Nias set out even to make the acquaintance of their Christian brethren of Sumatra, and be refreshed by their fellowship. Battak Christians have also visited their co-religionists in Nias. Kruyt states that in the whole of Dutch East India the Christians fraternize with one another. All who call upon the same God are recognized as comrades; the whole of Dutch East India Christians welcome each other.”
Conclusion
God’s great love is beautifully revealed in Jesus Christ (Matt. 2:1-12). The coming of the wise men was a prophecy of the coming of millions of Gentiles down through the ages. The earliest page in the Gospel history is a prophecy of the latest. These are the first-fruits of the Gentiles to Christ. They bear “in their hands a glass which showeth many more,” who at last will come like them to the King of the whole earth. “They shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord.” There were Gentiles at the cradle and at the cross. The Magi learned lessons needed by the East, especially of power in weakness, royalty in lowliness, incarnation not in monstrous forms or with destructive attributes, but in feeble infancy that passes through the ordinary stages of development.
“The Greeks who sought to see Jesus when near the hour of His death learned the lesson for want of which their nation’s culture rotted away. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.’ So these two groups, one at the beginning, the other at the end, one from the mysterious East, the other from the progressive and cultured West, received each a half of the completed truth, the gospel of incarnation and sacrifice, and witness to the sufficiency of Christ for all human needs and to the coming of the time when all the races of men shall gather round the throne to which cradle and cross have exalted Him and shall recognize in Him the Prince of all the kings of the earth, and the Lamb slain for the sins of the world” (Alexander Maclaren).
The birth of Jesus – the supreme event of history
It is a striking tribute to our blessed Lord that His birth in Bethlehem of Judæa is recognized as the watershed of history. When He appeared the foundation of the city of Rome was the starting-point of chronology; but His birth was long recognized as the birth of a new world, and about the middle of the sixth century of our era, Dionysius Exiguns, abbot of a monastery at Rome, proposed in his “Cyclus Paschalis” that Christians should henceforth reckon from that supreme event; and the proposal met with immediate and universal acceptance. However, it is certain that in fixing the commencement of the Christian era, Dionysius erred by several years; and it is a singular fact that, though our Lord’s birth is the supreme event of history, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to determine its precise date.
